Happy New Year, Constant Reader. Even as we speak, I am on vacation at an exotic locale, doing things only dreamed of in your philosophy.Well, maybe not your philosophy Quentin Tarantinos, definitely.I'll be back next week to take calls. Till then, this should keep ya busy:Da Great Dabidochan Sees AllYes, yes, come closer, my leetle piglets. Dont be afraid. Da Great Dabidochan Knows All. Sees All. Is All.Come sit beside Da Great Dabidochan, gaze into his crystal orb, and see what will come to pass in 1996:LIKELYPresident Clinton will be elected to a second term.

The NBA playoffs continue today. The Knicks face the Pacers at 8 p.m. The sole playoff game of the day will air on ESPN. Indianapolis leads the series 3-2. In Major League Baseball, the Rays play at the Orioles at 4:05 p.m. on Fox. The Marlins will host the Diamondbacks at 7:10 p.m. on Fox Sports Florida. And the Dodgers play at the Braves at 7:10 p.m. on Fox Sports South. More games are available via the MLB Network. Play continues at the PGA's Byron Nelson Championship this weekend.

When Pete McAlindon started Keybowl Inc. in 1997, he was looking for a way to relieve the pain in his hands from spending hours each day typing on a computer and using a mouse. The solution he came up with, a keyless ergonomic keyboard called the orbiTouch, sold well and won several awards. Building on that success, the company developed a smaller, cordless prototype of the orbiTouch in 2005. "But the minute we started user-testing it, everybody that looked at it said, 'Wow. That belongs in a game controller,'" McAlindon said.

The Kentucky Derby starts at 6:24 p.m. today at Chuchill Downs in Louisville, Ky. NBC starts its coverage of the Kentucky Derby at 4 p.m. on WESH-Channel 2 in Orlando. Orb remains the favorite in the betting before the post time. You can track the odds live on the Kentucky Derby website. Here are pictures of the Kentucky Derby horses.

ROBERT FRANCIS, 85, whose 50-year writing career included a dozen books and a lengthy friendship with poet Robert Frost, died Tuesday. The award- winning author's volumes of poetry include The Orb Weaver in 1960 and Butter Hill and Other Poems in 1984.

DRESDEN, Germany -- The city crowned its rebuilt Frauenkirche with a British-made gilded orb and cross Tuesday, a landmark step in the restoration of the 18th-century church that was destroyed by Allied firebombing in 1945. After a decade of rebuilding, the exterior of the Frauenkirche, or Church of Our Lady, was completed when a crane hauled the 29-ton cross and cupola atop the baroque structure's 250-foot dome.

In October, while Janice Grill of Leesburg and her husband took a 12-day cruise around Italy, they made a stop at Sorrento, on the south side of the Bay of Naples. After a full day of exploring the ruins of Pompeii, they were relaxing on their veranda as the ship prepared to depart, when Janice was truly moonstruck by the golden orb rising over the rooftops of Sorrento.

THEY NEVER CEASE. More than 20,000 people Sunday flocked to pray on a hill where a woman said the Madonna would make a supernatural sign appear in the sky. Some said they saw the sun vibrate and turn green. But followers of Maria Fiorita, 32, said this was caused by staring at the fiery orb and was not the promised sign. On Friday, Archbishop Antonio Ianucci ordered Catholics to worship the Madonna in church and at home.

The Kentucky Derby starts at 6:24 p.m. today at Chuchill Downs in Louisville, Ky. NBC starts its coverage of the Kentucky Derby at 4 p.m. on WESH-Channel 2 in Orlando. Orb remains the favorite in the betting before the post time. You can track the odds live on the Kentucky Derby website. Here are pictures of the Kentucky Derby horses.

Phantasm II (MCA Home Video, 97 minutes, R, $89.95): Sequel to the 1979 non-classic. Dismemberment is the theme, with many variations: You have your mutilation by medieval midget, your amputation by chain saw and your dismemberment by an airborne steel orb studded with blades. Given the creepy chords of an organ from hell that is this movie's score, the whir of the chain saw sounds almost reassuring.

So you may think you know what nighttime at Spaceship Earth --the iconic, 180-foot tall geodesic sphere that greets guests at the park entrance to Epcot-- looks like. On any given evening year-round, the giant ball is lit with striking hues of orange and purple, reminiscent of a gorgeous planetary sunset. Except Thursday night. Shortly after the park closed, during a private media event, one of the main characters from the movie "Monsters, Inc. " made a dramatic appearance in a hail of fireworks, in a first-ever projection to be displayed on the 18-story high orb at Walt Disney World.

Researchers have discovered the largest orb-weaving spider ever seen, a (relatively) massive creature whose body is about 1 1/2 inches across and whose legspan reaches 5 inches. A second group has found a vegetarian spider. The new orb weaver, called Nephila komaci, was discovered in Madagascar and Africa by a team led by Matjaz Kuntner of the Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts in Ljubljana. Nephila spiders are the largest web-spinning species, creating circular webs as large as 3 feet in diameter.

In October, while Janice Grill of Leesburg and her husband took a 12-day cruise around Italy, they made a stop at Sorrento, on the south side of the Bay of Naples. After a full day of exploring the ruins of Pompeii, they were relaxing on their veranda as the ship prepared to depart, when Janice was truly moonstruck by the golden orb rising over the rooftops of Sorrento.

When Pete McAlindon started Keybowl Inc. in 1997, he was looking for a way to relieve the pain in his hands from spending hours each day typing on a computer and using a mouse. The solution he came up with, a keyless ergonomic keyboard called the orbiTouch, sold well and won several awards. Building on that success, the company developed a smaller, cordless prototype of the orbiTouch in 2005. "But the minute we started user-testing it, everybody that looked at it said, 'Wow. That belongs in a game controller,'" McAlindon said.

The scientific universe shifted Thursday, and poor little Pluto got squashed. Astronomers meeting in the Czech Republic stripped the icy sphere of its status as a planet, throwing out 76 years of science texts written since stargazer Clyde Tombaugh detected a strange object on a photographic plate of the heavens. Throw out the textbooks, reconfigure your planetariums and adjust your star charts: Pluto is now a "dwarf planet" -- one of a new category of celestial bodies circling our sun outside the realm of the eight "classical" planets in the solar system: Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune.

If crafts are up your alley, here's a weekend mosaic project that can elevate your garden in a striking fashion. Create a gazing globe out of an ordinary bowling ball -- the dusty one hidden in the back of your closet will do. Or others' castaways are readily available for less than $5 at a thrift shop or tag sale. Also look for chipped coffee mugs, broken dishes and bags of marbles or glass beads. You can use these colorful objects as "tiles" to transform your bowling ball into a sparkly one-of-a-kind mosaic.

The NBA playoffs continue today. The Knicks face the Pacers at 8 p.m. The sole playoff game of the day will air on ESPN. Indianapolis leads the series 3-2. In Major League Baseball, the Rays play at the Orioles at 4:05 p.m. on Fox. The Marlins will host the Diamondbacks at 7:10 p.m. on Fox Sports Florida. And the Dodgers play at the Braves at 7:10 p.m. on Fox Sports South. More games are available via the MLB Network. Play continues at the PGA's Byron Nelson Championship this weekend.

IT WAS delightful how columnist Greg Dawson used the English language to express a constructive criticism regarding people walking in the middle of the street, obstructing traffic. He was instructing with tactful wording and at the same time making his writing a pleasure - humorous, poetic, wonderful.He cited the joys of the ''gentle art'' of strolling or sauntering on the sidewalks.I wish the neighborhood where I live had more sidewalks. I have to walk on the street as close to the curb as possible.

This week's column is brought to you by the letter "S," for spirits and -- gasp! -- sobriety. I blame that last one on fellow Drunken Ghost Hunter Kelly, who got lost in some boy's eyes on aisle eight of Publix when she really should have been meeting the rest of us ghost-hunting flakes. For what, you may ask? A tour of Spiritualist camp/high school hangout Cassadaga, located in Timbuktu, uh, I mean West Volusia. Oh, you're still wha-whaaing on the DGH moniker, aren't ya? That's a little side project a few of us kids put together several months back that involved two of our favorite pastimes: drinking and talking to ourselves (kinda rare for us to get answers when talking to air in a haunted locale)

CASSADAGA -- Remember in the movie Poltergeist when the eager paranormal investigators set up their high-tech ghost-busting equipment in the Freeling family's spirit-inhabited home built on a still-occupied cemetery in the suburbs? Well, the tiny west Volusia town of Cassadaga might not look much different on Saturday when scads of curious tourists grab their cameras and take to the streets for a first-ever guided "Night Tour with Orb Photography" session at the town's Spiritualist Camp.